The good old days...
22.02.08
Things have conspired over
the past few weeks to try to make me feel old. Firstly I
inched a step closer to the magic 40 and if that wasn’t
bad enough I then found myself heading off to a
secondary school open night because my eldest girl is
due to leave national school in the summer.
It seems like yesterday when she started school, but
there you go, now she’s getting set to head to the
secondary school I went to what seems like a lifetime
ago.
Going back to that open night brought back all sorts of
strange recollections for me of a school that I really
only ever had one piece of contact with since I left.
And that came about a few years ago as a result of a
phone call from one of the teachers I actually liked at
the place.
Still, it was the kind of call that sales people
normally make. You know the kind that catches you out in
the morning when you’re still running around trying to
get the kids to school |
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and you’ll say anything
just to get off the phone.
Only afterwards did I realise that I’d just agreed to
write a piece for the school for some book about the
long running association my family had with it over the
years.
Now this might sound silly, but I quickly realised I
wasn’t exactly all that fussed about such a task –
especially since my former English teacher was still
there.
I mean the bad spelling I could put down to my
one-fingered typing skills, but what about the grammar?
I was picturing the red pen-marks before I’d even laid a
finger on the keyboard.
Anyway my family had a long association with the school
mostly due to the fact that there were so many us. We
were kind of like hives. First just one appeared but
after that came another and then another.
There was no getting rid of them you just had to let
them run their course, which, as it happened, turned out
to be a marathon. Twelve members of my family passed
through the school followed quickly by six members of
the next generation.
Year after year we trudged the couple of hundred yards
from the house to the school that loomed over the top of
our estate like a giant people magnet.
Most of time, even though we were literally five hundred
yards away, we somehow managed to get through the gates
about two minutes after the first bell. The principal -
who often stood there waiting for stragglers -
maintained the closer we were to heaven, the further
away we were from God. Even though I always kind |
of knew what he meant, I
always wondered why he kept saying it?
I mean we were students, this was school. Surely the
word hell should have been in that sentence somewhere.
Back to the open night though and it was interesting to
see how the whole school was being sold to prospective
students and of course their parents.
It all sounded so great that I had to check a couple of
times in case I’d gone to the wrong place.
But then I realised I was definitely in the right place,
after all I had managed to arrive in two minutes late... |
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A DROP OF
PORTER is
the weekly
column of
Inishowen
Independent
editor,
Liam Porter. |
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